Business Making Progress

Halloween, Zombies and the Supply Chain

With Halloween rapidly approaching, coupled with continued interest in zombies, I thought to myself: how could we apply some supply chain principles to surviving a potential zombie out break?

First let us make the following assumptions about the zombie outbreak – it mimics the characteristics of the zombies on the poplar show “The Walking Dead.” Yes I admit I am a big fan. So the zombies can smell and hear their prey, they do not see very well but they are attracted by rapid motion, can travel in packs, are always hungry so looking for “food” (maybe they should think about a hunter – farmer model), seem to have varied rates of speed and if they spot a human…look out.

For the humans the rules are fairly simple as well – survival means not being eaten or infected (this can happen either via bites or scratches from a zombie). The only way to incapacitate a zombie – the head/brain of the zombie needs to be disabled, how you do it is a personal choice (bullets, arrows, shovels, blunt objects, screw drivers…really anything that is available).

So let us apply some of our supply chain concepts to surviving a potential zombie infestation.

• Visibility is vital for survival. You must be aware, and with as long a time horizon as possible, as to exactly where the zombies are in relationship to you. Are they lurking the woods you are camped in? Or maybe down the road from where you RV broke down, or in the same building as you. This has to be in real time as well, learning about the presence of zombies in your building the next day is not very useful if you decided to overnight it in that same building. If you cannot see it, you are blind to the threats that could be right in front of you.
• Correlating the actions of the zombies. Okay you now know where they are, but can you assess what they intentions are? Granted you should always assume they are looking to make you their next super size meal, but what if they already fed? Regardless you need to quickly assess the situation and the events presented – do you fight them, if so how are your inventory levels with regards to weapons? Does your personnel have the appropriate technical skills to fend of the threat? At what point would any delay cause irreversible damages to you and your entourage? If you decide to avoid contact do you have the appropriate routes available to achieve this goal? If you do engage what are the potential consequences of that course of action – attracting more of the flesh-eating horde and therefore creating a greater problem?
• Take action, now you know where the zombies are and you have figured out that they are really hungry and active but you are confident in your groups’ skill set and your weapons inventory. You must now be able to coordinate and give direction in real time. Provide instructions and guidance to fend off the threat. Ensure that the proper personnel are undertaking the appropriate tasks in order to ensure success.

Seems fairly straightforward to me! Just make sure you can do this in real time! Learning about a stock out in your weapons inventory 2 days later, or seeing that a horde of the undead are waiting for you in that building after the fact, could be dangerous for your well being. Being able to survive a zombie infestation is similar to being able to dynamically process and manage your supply chain’s events, ensuring a positive outcome.

Imitation is the Highest Form of Flattery

It’s nice to be first…

First makes you a thought leader. First means you are ahead of the curve. First tells everyone else “follow me…”

On September 20, 2011, Progress announced the general availability of Progress® Arcade™ - a portal environment for simplifying the deployment of SaaS applications in the Cloud. The Arcade platform is Cloud agnostic to prevent vendor lock-in, thanks to a partnership with RightScale. It’s so simple to use, it only takes a handful of mouse clicks to go from zero to the Cloud. You can move your application and data back and forth from the Cloud if you require without restriction. Initially, Amazon is the Cloud vendor for Arcade, with others following soon.

Now, read this:

On October 6, 2011 at Oracle’s OpenWorld Conference, CEO Larry Ellison announced the Oracle Public Cloud, which I happened to learn about from a blog post on TechCrunch. According to Ellison, the Oracle Public Cloud is a platform for the deployment of Oracle applications in the Cloud. It avoids vendor lock-in through Cloud interoperability. It allows the application and data to move back and forth from the Cloud if needed. And, it can “play nice” with Amazon.

Sound familiar? It sure does.

Progress Software was first to market with Arcade. Oracle was first as well – first to follow!

Again, it’s nice to be first…

Thanks and, as always, please feel free to drop me a line and let me know what you think.

Supply Chain planning is dead...long live planning!

I was just at the annual North American CSCMP event in Philadelphia. I had the pleasure of spending time with some leading supply chain influencers and friends such as: @bob_ferrari, @lcecere, @arnoldmarkwells, @jeffashcroft to name a few.

What struck me was the absense of supply chain planning was from the event. Well I guess it should not be a real surprise when so many vendors have come and gone trying to provide users with the optimal "plan." Over a decade ago there was an explosion of companies that could provide an optimal planning the likes of i2 , Manugistics, Red Pepper Software or Numetrix to name a few, all looked to plan or schedule or optimize different parts of the extended supply chain. The ERP players did not stand still and created their own supply chain planning and optimization offerings - SAP APO even spelled it out- Advanced Planning and Optimization. But then the tide turned.

Businesses and supply chains realized that all the planning and optimization in the world was not a magic bullet. Companies such as i2 and Manugistics recognized they needed to add execution engines to their offerings to compete. ERP players like SAP and Oracle went about developing or acquiring their own execution engines. The past 5 years has seen an increase in the need for better execution, such as TMS (transportation management systems) solutions. Which brings me to CSCMP where the conference was heavy on the logistics and transportation side of supply chain. So has planning been killed off once and for all? No.

Planning will not go away, it should not be retired. Why? Planning is what allows companies to determine how resources will be allocated, where personnel is needed, the level of investments needed and finally what the goals are for the business. The basis of all plans is to determine a path to achieve a goal. Think about football (the american version), you have plays scripted and practiced, why? To achieve goals. Whether the goal is to score a touchdown, gain 5 yards or run out the clock, there are plays (plans) in place with the intent to reach these goals. Of course once on the field, you must execute this plan. As we all know, "no plan survives the first contact with the enemy." This is where execution kicks in, you need to be able to execute your plan. There is a third element to this - reducing the gap between execution and the plan. What do I mean by this? The ability to rapidly sense out of plan events, determine their impact and take corrective action.

There was some discussion about this on the floor at CSCMP, and many I spoke with were very excited about an ability to do this. The question remains, are we ready to move our focus away from simple execution and planning to the ability to truly correlate the two in such a manner that we can reduce our reaction time to out of plan events?

What do you think? And if you were at CSCMP what were your thoughts?